Online Police/Fire Radio Scanner

[AugieTN]

It's a pretty nice online Police/Fire Radio Scanner. A lot of Police have went to Encrypted Radio, so your local dept may not show up.

Broadcastify - Live Police, Fire, EMS, Aircraft, and Rail Audio Feeds

 

[Unforgiven]

I used that for a while. The downside is there is a 1-5 minute delay from live. I used to work right in the center of Town and the police and ambulance would go screaming by and by the time it came across the online scanner I'd forget to pay attention. I now have a scanner at home and one at work so I can listen to most of what's happening around me.

 

[olbriar]

I had a mobile scanner years ago. That was before encryption and bi-channel communication. It was so long ago that the frequencies scanned were actual crystals and not tunable.

 

[Hadron]

As a kid I remember that one of the ordinary analogue radio sets we had could pick up police broadcasts if you hunted around the edges of the frequency range.

But all of the services here have used encrypted digital communications for about 20 years now (i.e. about a dozen years after civilian mobile communications went digital ), And that service is due to be replaced by a newer (LTE-based) one in the next year or so, motivated in part by weaknesses in the encryption of the older system.

 

[ozonetrooper]

I remember going to Radio Shack and buying crystals for my scanner !

Our area moved up to the 800 Mhg range many years ago and made all of those scanners useless.

I had a 800 programmable scanner that worked until they started moving the frequencies to different areas to keep us from listening to them. I had a buddy in the Fire Department that used to program my scanner for me, as it was very complicated, and after they started moving the freq's, if you did not know where to program it to, it was useless.

I have a few buddies that are in LE and even they say it is a pain in the butt when they have to take their radios in to be reprogrammed so often.

 

[Unforgiven]

I remember going to Radio Shack and buying crystals for my scanner !

Our area moved up to the 800 Mhg range many years ago and made all of those scanners useless.

I had a 800 programmable scanner that worked until they started moving the frequencies to different areas to keep us from listening to them. I had a buddy in the Fire Department that used to program my scanner for me, as it was very complicated, and after they started moving the freq's, if you did not know where to program it to, it was useless.

I have a few buddies that are in LE and even they say it is a pain in the butt when they have to take their radios in to be reprogrammed so often.

radioreference.com lists most frequencies. It is a community maintained database and where I get all my codes from. My Town, and most around me, use analog frequencies, so I can use cheap scanners to listen. I have a BCD536 scanner at home that lets me listen to Mass State Police on digital frequencies as well as analog ones. That scanner lets you input a zip code and it loads the local frequencies automagically.

 

[Fox Mulder]

I've had Scanner Radio on my phones for years, haven't used it much lately.
As a long-time ham operator and general radio guy I've always had plenty of scanners and other radios around, I have a Radio Shack Pro2004 which was one of the best analog scanners ever made. These days it sits unused although there is still plenty to listen to. NYPD is supposed to be going to encryption soon but they haven't yet.